European robotics challenges — A retrospective analysis of stage I towards a better challenge design in the future

As a key factor for driving innovation in European robotics and manufacturing, it is the main objective of The European Robotics Challenges (EuRoC) to strengthen collaboration and cross-fertilization between the industrial and the research community. Towards this aim EuRoC launched and is running three industrially relevant challenges in European robotics with applicability to the factory of the future. The EuRoC challenges are organized as three successive stages of increasing complexity. The aim of this paper is to report on and present the results of Stage I, in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of the challenges design/processes, report on exploited/missed opportunities, avoided/encountered risks, etc. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to suggest improvements wrt to the design of challenges in the future.